Indigenous advocates kick off educational listening sessions in rural Montana this month to educate Native Americans about actions the state legislature took this session soon to affect them.

The group Western Native Voice holds culturally tailored community meetings to ensure Montana's Native Americans are engaged in and educated about policy decisions affecting their lives. The group is embarking on a series of listening and teaching sessions to help Native populations around Montana understand issues ranging from health care to voting rights.

Adam Beaves-Fisher, deputy director of government and political relations for the group, said equal access to polls, mail-in ballots and broadband Internet are especially crucial in rural areas, and disproportionately affect Montana's Indigenous population.

"These are real challenges that when you are faced with raising a family, going to work," Beaves-Fisher observed. "When you have these extra barriers that rural Montanans are facing, that creates a real disincentive to vote and engage in the process."

Western Native Voice is starting its legislative tour in Fort Peck July 27 and will continue around the state into September with stops on the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation and on Rocky Boy's Indian Reservation in north-central Montana.

Beaves-Fisher also pointed out Montana's Native American population is chronically undercounted in the U.S. Census, which leaves the state's rural Indigenous people under funded and underrepresented. He added the latest figures are no exception.

"By our estimate, on a conservative basis, Montana tribes are missing out on over $745 million annually because of that undercount," Beaves-Fisher explained. "I think that it's really important that all Montanans and Native Montanans really prepare for the 2030 Census and that counts all Montanans."

Beaves-Fisher added a lack of communication about the existence of the Census and its importance are the critical reasons for the lack of Indigenous representation, especially in hard to reach rural areas.

The Department of the Interior is disbursing $7 million to offices throughout the country for Indigenous-led conservation projects.

The Indian Youth Service Corps initiates public service projects, run by Native young adults, that aim to benefit Native communities.

In South Dakota, the program is hosted through an agreement between Conservation Legacy's Ancestral Lands Program and a little-known arm of the National Park Service called the Rivers, Trails and Conservation Assistance Program.

David Thomson is the program's regional manager.

"So we provide free professional assistance for a year's time frame," said Thomson. "And we come in as planners and help those communities through that process to really get those projects off the ground."

Communities can apply for this assistance and - Thomson said - current projects include building an Indigenous outdoor classroom at a Sioux Falls elementary school, renovating a trail with the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe, and developing an outdoor recreation area in Kyle on the Pine Ridge reservation.

A second South Dakota corps member coordinates cultural events with local Tribes in Wind Cave National Park.

Much of this work, especially the outreach, is done by Indian Youth Service Corps members - who benefit from a good-paying job, typically after college, and a professional development opportunity.

Thomson said after a year of service, a unique public lands hiring authority can work toward converting corps members into permanent staff.

"We need to always be diversifying and strengthening our workforce," said Thomson, "and definitely diversifying our workforce is going to improve the National Park Service in the future."

According to the Park Service, 2.5% of its 2020 employees were Native Americans, almost twice the proportion of Native Americans in the general U.S. population.




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New research shows Indigenous youth comprise more than a third of the children in Montana's foster care system, despite making up a far smaller segment of the state's overall population.

Researchers said addressing the problem is challenging. Data from the National Center for Juvenile Justice show the number of Indigenous youth comprise 30% of the children in foster care, despite making up just 10% of the Montana population.

Deana Around Him, Indigenous children, youth and families researcher for the organization Child Trends and citizen of the Cherokee Nation, said a combination of factors is driving the disparity, but it often comes down to a lack of child oversight.

"Child neglect can lead a family to be engaged with the child welfare system and result in a child being removed from a home," Around Him explained. "We wonder if that is more of a question about the resources available to families and if the solution should be different than removal."

Around Him acknowledged solutions have been hard to achieve in Montana but researchers are exploring kinship and other family-based support systems that have shown hints of success in the past. A 10-year data analysis by the Montana Free Press showed Native children are placed in foster care at roughly five times the rate of white children.

The Juvenile Justice data showed Native American children in Montana far outpace any other racial group in the child welfare system. Around Him noted in addition to family-based solutions, making resources available to struggling families is also important so they can make what would seem like easy decisions.

"Getting a job may not be so simple as like 'yes, take the job'" Around Him asserted. "Because it offers greater income for your family but if taking that job requires you to find child care, and if there's limited child care available in the community, who are you leaving our child with?"

There has been a national effort in recent years to keep children in their home when it's safe to do so but despite those efforts, the number of Indigenous children in the Montana foster care system has continued to grow.


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The Black Hills National Forest is one of the latest federal lands to enter a co-stewardship agreement with local tribal nations-a management model encouraged by the Biden administration.

The Pactola / Ȟe Sápa Visitor Center sits on the south end of the Pactola Dam, along the 1.2 million acres making up the Black Hills. A ceremony held this month honored a new memorandum of understanding for co-stewardship of the center, bringing together local tribal nations and the U.S. Forest Service to jointly administer the site.

About 80 similar agreements were made after a 2021 federal order, according to the Interior Department.

Ada Montague, staff attorney for the Native American Rights Fund, said the agreements are opportunities to make good on federal treaty promises; ongoing legal obligations the U.S. government has toward tribal nations.

"There's often a difficult history to reconcile with," Montague acknowledged. "That's usually a big first challenge. But when there are engaged folks on both sides who want to see something go forward, then typically the difficulties are more technical."

The technical challenges may be around the structure and terms of agreement, Montague pointed out, but there are increasingly more models for them, including a sovereign-to-sovereign cooperative agreements online resource launched by The University of Washington Law Library in March.

Tribes involved in the Black Hills agreement include the Cheyenne River, Standing Rock, Oglala, Rosebud and Crow Creek Sioux Tribes.

Weston Jones, who is Oglala Lakota and a summer law clerk for the Native American Rights Fund, said co-stewardship of the visitor center allows tribes to teach the public.

"They can share stories, they can share plant knowledge, animal knowledge, watershed knowledge and all the natural resource knowledge and pass that to their next generation," Jones noted.

The Forest Service said the center averages about 40,000 visitors a year.


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